Where Liberalism Is Alive and Well!

A very good friend of mine and fellow professor produced this “lipdub” with the help of former and current students in the film program where I work. I’m not a huge fan of this new genre, to be honest, but this is really cool. Here are a couple of behind the scenes stories I heard from students. In the week before they shot it (it is one continuous camera move), they were at the retirement home for planning and staging and there was a woman who every day asked them what they were doing. She would forget from one day to the next. And she was one of the leads.

Another woman, I think it was at the pool, couldn’t hear a thing. So a student was set there to cue her, but he kept getting in the shot. They realized that if he winked at her, she would start. So that’s how they got her to do it after several takes. She later said something like, “This handsome kid kept winking at me all day long.” Enjoy!

By the way, you may have seen it on Good Morning America, The Today Show, Inside Edition or many other national newscasts. I guess Youtube is having trouble keeping up with all the hits. There is a backlog, right now it has 512,000 views. It’s a Michael Buble song and he loved it.

The Republicans came after your Medicare and now they want your Social Security too. The only way to insure that you won’t lose either is to vote Democratic in all future elections. Republican’s used to be much more subtle about how they want to throw seniors into the private market to go head to head with health insurers and Wall Street, but lately the new leaders of the GOP apparently have no idea what they are getting into. When the Bush Administration flirted with it in 2005, they learned very quickly that it was a bad idea. But the new GOP feels so empowered that they think they can just come right out in the open with their stupid ideas. As a Democrat, I want to thank them. Here are some details from Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly…

Alas, that’s not the case. A few days ago, Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas, a member of the House Republican leadership, unveiled the “Savings Account For Every American Act,” which would allow Americans to withdraw from the Social Security system and opt into a privatized system.

Of course, with Social Security functioning as a pay-as-you-go program, if workers “opt out” of the system, Social Security would either (a) crumble with insufficient funds; or (b) need Congress to spend more money to make up the difference. How would Sessions address this? By all appearances, he hasn’t thought that far ahead.

I guess we Democrats should be encouraged by the Republican’s lack of political savvy, but their propaganda machine is pretty effective and they will have some success with their brain-dead, Rush Limbaugh/Fox News programmed followers. But those people will never vote Democratic anyway, so the real audience for this is the moderates, who will clearly be able to make the connection between the risks of privatizing and their future security. It’s one of those ideas that is rather easy to counter, from The Hill, courtesy of Steve Benen...

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday predicted that House Republican plans to let workers opt out of Social Security would fail as voters realize how it will threaten their retirement.

“Seniors who have paid into Social Security through a lifetime of hard work shouldn’t end up in a risky privatization scheme to gamble their retirement on Wall Street,” Israel said. “The public has rejected this kind of Social Security privatization in the past and will again.”

Israel accused Republicans of looking to resolve the government’s fiscal crisis by scaling back Medicare and Social Security, while ignoring higher corporate taxes.

I don’t see any adults in the leadership of the Republican Party so I anticipate even more boneheaded moves in the next year and a half leading up to the next election. I don’t even think the complicate media can help spin them out of some these messes they’ve created. It will take a lot of distractions to keep people from seeing what is going on and the difference between the 2010 race and 2012 is that President Obama is in this race, with his bully pulpit, his 75% personal popularity and his unmatched ability to deliver a message in a clear and concise way. The only thing the Republicans have in their arsenal is their appeal to racists. And with the president at 75% personal approval, their clearly aren’t enough racists to put them over the top. It should be a fun ride to November 6, 2012.

The Republican’s have been trying desperately to change the subject, redefine the word “voucher” and get the media to help them with it. So far it hasn’t been working, although the media is starting to come around – they are made up of some of the dumbest people on the planet. I have to admit that I’ve been enjoying watching Paul Ryan and all those Republicans who hitched their wagon to him scattering like rats fleeing a sinking ship. It’s also been fun watching as others double down on their strategy and dig the hole even deeper. The tactics the GOP are using amount to intimidation and a huge heaping of whining. From Paul Krugman…

What’s in a name? A lot, the National Republican Congressional Committee obviously believes. Last week, the committee sent a letter demanding that a TV station stop running an ad declaring that the House Republican budget plan would “end Medicare.” This, the letter insisted, was a false claim: the plan would simply install a “new, sustainable version of Medicare.”

But Comcast, the station’s owner, rejected the demand — and rightly so. For Republicans are indeed seeking to dismantle Medicare as we know it, replacing it with a much worse program.

I’m seeing many attempts to shout down anyone making this obvious point, and not just from Republican politicians. For some reason, many commentators seem to believe that accurately describing what the G.O.P. is actually proposing amounts to demagoguery. But there’s nothing demagogic about telling the truth.

The kings of demagoguery, the GOP, are trying the Karl Rove strategy of accusing your opponents of doing what you are actually doing. This works with the “red meat” Republicans who simply chew up anything thrown their way, but I’m afraid it doesn’t work on the rest of the population. But since the election of President Obama, it seems the only people the GOP is playing to these days are those hard core, believe anything Fox and Rush say boneheads. It’s kind of funny though, when it comes to seniors being directly affected by the idiocy of the Republicans, they don’t take too kindly to things like paying out of pocket for their Medicare. More from Krugman…

And most seniors wouldn’t be able to afford adequate coverage. A Congressional Budget Office analysis found that to get coverage equivalent to what they have now, older Americans would have to pay vastly more out of pocket under the Paul Ryan plan than they would if Medicare as we know it was preserved. Based on the budget office estimates, the typical senior would end up paying around $6,000 more out of pocket in the plan’s first year of operation.

I say to the Republicans, keep doubling down, seniors don’t vote or contribute anyway. You’ll be just fine, keeping pushing your plan to eliminate Medicare, it won’t matter to those seniors. Really!

I’m just loving the direction that the Republican Party has decided to pursue by hitching their wagon to Paul Ryan and his libertarian ideas. It almost makes me want to create a Jane Hamsher sock puppet to go on their websites and encourage them to “keep it up, you’re doing fine”. I would never do that, who has time, but it’s fun to think about.

I’ve said it before that I never expected that the Republican leadership would get behind Ryan’s plan, with it’s blatant assault on senior citizens who VOTE! But apparently their stupidity knows no bounds. The response at town hall meetings since the announcement of the plan shows that it is backfiring on them big time. They have a lot of explaining to do. From the Washington Post…

Democrats, eager to win back the seniors and independents who abandoned the party in last year’s midterm elections, have declared the vote a “moment of truth” and this week launched a media campaign accusing GOP House members of dismantling Medicare and endangering retirees.

The assault has taken some Republicans by surprise, prompting concerns that the party is ceding ground in a policy debate that GOP strategists already viewed as perilous.

I have a feeling that Paul Ryan is going to be a lonely guy pretty soon, he started a ball rolling down hill that is going to roll right over his party and bring Democratic rule back to the House of Representatives. More from The Washington post…

A Washington Post/ABC News poll published this week found that two-thirds of Americans want Medicare to remain as is. That includes 62 percent of independents and nearly eight in 10 people 65 and older — making for an uphill climb for House Republicans trying to reassure constituents.

I used to use a mnemonic device to keep track of the difference between Medicaid and Medicare and it went like this: Medicare has the word care in it, so my thought process was that Republicans only “care” about seniors, not poor people. Of course, now I can’t use that anymore because the don’t care about seniors anymore either. From Think Progress…

The centerpiece of the House Republican’s plan is a proposal that repeals traditional Medicare and replaces it with a health insurance voucher that loses its value over time. Because the value of the Republican’s privatized Medicare replacement does not keep up with the cost of health care, their plan will gradually eliminate Medicare because its increasingly worthless vouchers will eventually only cover a very tiny fraction of the cost of a health insurance plan.

Seniors will feel the effect of the GOP’s draconian plan long before it succeeds in phasing out Medicare. According to the CBO, total health care expenditures for a typical 65-year-old “would be almost 40 percent higher with private coverage under the GOP plan than they would be with a continuation of traditional Medicare” in the very first year that the GOP plan goes into effect:

Who The Hell Am I!

I’m a liberal that is extreme in some ways and not in others. I support President Obama and make no apologies for it. I think he has done a phenomenal job, especially when you consider that he inherited a huge mess and has faced unprecedented opposition from a lazy & desperate Republican Party. I’m a film producer/director/editor, adjunct professor, technician, media critic and photographer when I’m not reading left wing blogs and typing on this one. – On Twitter @ExtremeLiberal or Email at liberalforreal (at) gmail.com

Own An Important Part Of American History!

Cicely Tyson narrates this award winning documentary that tells the story of African American migration from the old south to the prosperous north. Winner of 5 Awards including "Best Film" at the Astoria International Film Festival, the "Paul Robeson Award" at the Newark Black Film Festival and "Best Film Relating To The Black Experience" at the XXV International Black Cinema Berlin/Germany!